


cage locked 'round my heart

by radialarch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Dream Sharing, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, steve rogers's psyche is definitely the best place to take a soul-searching journey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 09:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6698878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We have people who know something about Asgard,” Romanov says. “Thought we might need someone who knows Steve.”</p><p>“I don’t,” he says. “Not anymore.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	cage locked 'round my heart

When Romanov tracks him down in Berlin, she knocks on the door. He answers it, wary, thinking about escape routes.

“Did Rogers send you?”

“No,” she says, and shoves a file into his chest. “Steve’s in trouble.”

———

They take the next flight to New York. Romanov takes the aisle seat, stretches out her legs and settles into an approximation of sleep.

He puts the file down an hour after take-off and waits for Romanov to tilt her head in his direction. “They didn’t wake me for New York."

“I know," she says.

“Or London.”

“Yes.”

“New Mexico.”

Romanov says, “What’s your point?”

“Why me?”

“He spent two years looking for you.”

He looks away.

“We have people who know something about Asgard,” she says. “Thought we might need someone who knows Steve.”

“I don’t,” he says. “Not anymore.”

“Then why are you coming to New York?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that one.

“Get some rest,” she advises, and clasps an oversized pair of headphones over her ears.

He closes his eyes.

———

They’re holding Rogers in a small apartment. He frowns at Romanov.

"Limited resources,” she shrugs. “It’s Jane’s. She’s nice.” She knocks, smartly, and steps back.

“Heyyyyy,” says the woman who answers. “Love the headphones, Nat, very hipster chic. And you.” She looks him over, eyebrow raised. “Nice, _very_ nice. You can come in too.”

“Darcy,” Romanov nods. “Stick to the boyfriend, this one’s got history.”

“Doesn’t hurt to look,” says Darcy, shooting him another appreciative glance, and waves them through the door.

Inside, the apartment’s in chaos. All the furniture in the living room’s been shoved aside; in the center, there’s a tangle of wires around a crystalline mass, and—

And Steve.

Under the surface of the crystal, Steve’s skin’s taken on a faint bluish tint. His eyes are closed, one of his hands curled into a loose fist. He looks—

He looks like—

“Barnes,” Romanov says, “he’s not dead, Barnes, you gotta keep it together,” and he draws in one ragged breath, and then another, and he’s shaking but it is 2016 and there are things he remembers and _Steve’s not dead, he can’t be dead_.

“Why is he—” he rasps, and he means to say _frozen_ but the word gets stuck in his throat.

“What, encased in a huge block of crystal?” Darcy says. “He did that to himself.”

“Darcy,” a voice says reproachfully. Barnes jerks his head up to see a woman clambering over the back of the sofa, holding something electronic.

“Okay, fine,” Darcy says, and recites: “Captain America and an Asgardian artifact hooked into his subconscious capable of manifesting neuroquantum phenomena did it.”

“In the library, with a candlestick,” Romanov mutters.

“It’s in his head,” he says, and turns to Romanov. “You let them put something  _in his head_ —”

“Hey, we didn’t put it there,” Darcy says indignantly. “Jane, tell him. We’ve been trying to get it out!”

“We have this,” the woman — Jane — says, and holds up the machine in the hand. “You can think of it like — oh, imagine if Cap retreated into his mind and started building a fence to keep everyone out.”

“The crystal.”

“Yes. Though obviously I’m not a biologist, I’m pretty sure the neurochemistry involved is way more complex and —”

“Jane,” Romanov says.

“Sorry,” she says, sheepish. “Anyway, he’s either ignoring us shouting at him from the outside, or he can’t hear in the first place. What this does is to basically give you a boost so you can climb over the fence.”

“If you have that, why’s he still in there?” Barnes asks.

“Oh, we’ve all tried,” Darcy says cheerfully. “That’s when he just totally buried himself in crystal.”

“We think it’s part of a fear response,” Jane says. “If he sees someone climbing the fence he doesn’t trust, he just makes the fence taller.”

Barnes goes cold. “That’s why you brought me.”

Romanov says, “Yes.”

“ _Are you_ —” He breaks off. Takes a breath. “I’m not doing this.”

“You’re the only one who has a chance.”

“You don’t know what it’s like in my head,” he says, low. “I’m not taking that in there.”

“Barnes,” Romanov says, and her eyes are hard. “I didn’t come find you because I thought it was a good choice. It’s the only choice.”

———

“It’s— well, it’s not _actually_ gonna be like climbing a fence,” Jane had said, sticking electrodes to his scalp. “Just come back if you feel like there’s gonna be trouble.”

Except she hadn’t said anything about how, and he opens his eyes to a gray fog.

He turns in a circle, slowly, trying to make out any landmarks. The air’s silent here, settled thickly like a blanket. He clears his throat, says into nothing, “Steve?”

The sound dies quick. He shakes his head, frustrated, and turns again. He thinks there’s an outline of something solid in the distance, barely darker than the fog around it.

He doesn’t know if it’s real, or his eyes playing tricks; but it’s the best he’s got.

He starts walking.

———

He’s beginning to hear things.

At first he’d thought he was imagining things, his brain making up noise to fill the empty space. A murmur, too low to make out any words. But it doesn’t stop, doesn’t resolve itself into meaning: just goes on and on, like an ocean, steadily beating a long way off.

The shape’s definitely a shape now: a low, solid building emerging from the gloom. He keeps going, even though there’s nothing to give him a sense of distance. He’s prepared to walk forever.

———

There’s a child in front of him, the first solid thing he’s seen since he woke up in the place. “Hey,” he says hoarsely, “what are you—”

The child looks up.

He’s got a bloody nose and an eye that’s going black. He leaves off trying to clean his face with a ragged sleeve and narrows his eyes.

Steve couldn’t have been more than seven, then; he stares at Barnes now, says in his loftiest voice, “What’re you looking at?”

“Jesus, kid,” he says. “Go easy, you just got out of a fight.”

Steve sniffs. There’s blood dripping onto his collar; he wipes it off and mutters, mutinous, “‘m not afraid of you.”

Barnes can’t help it; his mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he says, “you never were.”

Steve frowns, the expression much too serious for his face. “Who are you?”

“I’m—” he says, and stops, puzzled. He thought he’d figured it out, all these months of pulling himself together, but now he’s not so sure if he’s got it right. “Trying to help,” he finally says, and that one sits right, something like truth on his tongue.

But Steve’s gone.

———

The building, when he reaches it, is familiar. He stares at it for a few moments before it clicks.

Steve pulled him and the rest of the 107th out of this building in 1943.

“Dammit, Steve,” he says, “what are you playing at,” and walks inside.

———

The sound in his ear has changed. Not the quiet murmur of an ocean, but cold endless rush of the wind.

 _It’s not real,_ he tells himself, suppressing a shiver; and he goes up.

———

He remembers this climb: going up, and up, and Steve in front of him like a miracle. But there had been the Red Skull, and an inferno, then; this time, the climb ends in a door.

He thinks maybe he knows what this is about, but he pushes on through anyway.

———

He steps out onto the cliff, looks carefully at the train. He’d never really had a chance to just look, before.

Steve’s clinging to the rail, one hand outstretched. He’s lost his glove, Barnes notices; the fingers are white with cold.

Below the two of them is the shape of Bucky Barnes, falling, falling.

 _He’d been that person,_ Barnes thinks, the one who’d lived for Steve Rogers, and died. And Hydra had tried to yank him out of this body, this mind — had  _done_ it, the best they could, while Steve had carried his ghost inside him all that time.

He’s not that person anymore, not exactly. But maybe he’s not a stranger, either.

“Steve,” he says out loud, and he remembers what it had felt like, his hands slippery on the railing and his heart in his mouth — he remembers — the fear sharp on his tongue and the wind a howl in his ears —

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve had said — is saying, “grab my hand,” and he remembers falling —

— remembers Steve, battered, saying “Finish it” —

— and he’d thought they’d carved everything out of him but it turned out they couldn’t take Steve.

The rail’s beginning to splinter. He braces his feet against the siding, stretches forward — and jumps.

For a breathless moment he’s untethered, weightless, and then Steve catches hold of his hand.

They tumble into the car, Barnes with all the air knocked out of him, and then Steve’s hands are on him, his face, his shoulders.

“I let you go,” Steve says, frantic, “I let you fall and I couldn’t—”

“You didn’t,” he says, and his heart’s hammering hard inside his chest but the floor’s a solid real thing against his back. “God, you didn’t, long after you should have.”

“Buck,” Steve says, one hand curving itself carefully around the back of his head , and Bucky thinks — says, warm and slow, “Yeah, ‘s me” — isn’t even surprised, really, when Steve tips his head down to fit their mouths together.

“Come on, then,” he says, later, when his heart’s settled back to a steady beat. “We’ve got better places to be.”

“Well,” Steve says, and smiles. “If you’re coming, too.”

———

He wakes up, and there’s Romanov with a line between her eyebrows and Jane with a triumphant shout; but then Steve’s coming towards him with blue still dripping from his hair and he thinks: _I chose this. I came back to this._

Steve says, “Bucky,” relief thick in his voice, and presses their foreheads together, hard, his hands around Bucky’s shoulders like he’s never planning to let go.

“History, huh,” he hears Darcy say, “that’s one word for it,” and he laughs, wild, happy enough to be stupid with it.

“Yeah,” he says, “something like that,” and what he means is:

_We’ve fought for this, pal: the history of you and me._

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second fic I've written where Bucky discovers himself on a journey through a foggy dreamscape searching for Steve, so obviously I've gotten predictable. Thank god Civil War's coming to provide new fic fodder, honestly.


End file.
